Mesmerizing Dada Videos
From the Everything Is Dada exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery
Through July 3, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Dada art movement with a vast and exciting exhibit of work from its collection. “In 1916 a group of young men and women from across Europe came together in Zurich and shook the foundations of the art world,” writes the gallery’s curators. “At the Cabaret Voltaire, they staged innovative and often shocking shows that included dance, music, poetry, and puppetry, laying the ground for postmodern performance art. Firmly anti-authoritarian, the Dada artists questioned established norms and academic traditions and created works that blurred the line between fine and applied arts.”
Also included in the exhibit are screenings of Dada and Surrealist short films, including the three offered here by PROVOKR:
At the top of the page is Man Ray’s Le retour à la raison (“Return to Reason,” 1923), an early silent classic of experimental cinema.
Below is Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale (1924), which creates a silent, abstract visual equivalent for music.
And finally, there is the satirical faux-narrative of René Clair’s Entr’acte (1924), a 22-minute Dada epic with a scenario by Francis Picabia and a score by Erik Satie. It’s a true formalist extravaganza and a wild ride, which reaches a climax on a rollercoaster around 16:50.
